Te Pāti Māori more concerned with Gaza than Māori children being murdered at home
While Māori children are being beaten, abused and killed right here in New Zealand, Te Pāti Māori’s leaders are too busy preaching about Gaza to notice the blood on their own doorstep.
Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer are demanding the New Zealand Government expel the Israeli ambassador unless Israel halts its military campaign and opens up Gaza to humanitarian aid. That’s their priority. Not the Māori kids being buried, not the Māori women being beaten, not the Māori offenders clogging up the justice system with violent crimes. Their outrage is selective and political, not moral.
Waititi condemned both Hamas and Israel saying, “We condemn Hamas for murdering civilians and taking civilian hostages. We also condemn the retaliatory actions of the Israeli government.” Then he pivoted straight into the usual foreign policy theatre about international law and humanitarian corridors, all while ignoring the chaos ripping through his own communities.
Ngarewa-Packer was even more delusional, accusing Israel of apartheid, genocide and colonialism. It’s easy for her to shout about oppression halfway around the world, but where is her voice when Māori kids are dying up in Northland while under the care of Ngati Hine? Where is her anger when Māori families are trapped in gang-run communities plagued by drugs, violence and generational trauma?
Video source: Ani O’Brien
She says the occupation of Palestinian land must end. Meanwhile, Māori children are being raised in abusive homes with parents with rap sheets instead of role models. She claims to fight for indigenous justice. What has Te Pāti Māori actually done to protect vulnerable Māori here in Aotearoa? How many Māori women need to be killed before Te Pāti Māori calls out the violence within?
Te Pāti Māori wants to pretend they’re champions for indigenous peoples everywhere, yet they’ve failed to protect their own. They cry colonisation at every opportunity but go silent when it’s their own people doing the damage. The truth is ugly, but ignoring it to chase international headlines is cowardly.
It’s easier for them to scream about Israel than admit that Māori are being failed by their own, that decades of blame and grievance have led nowhere, and that their party has no real plan for the future.
Te Pāti Māori wants to kick out an ambassador from Israel, but they won’t lift a finger to expel violent thugs from Māori communities. They’re too busy polishing their activist credentials to do the hard work that might actually save lives at home.
If Rawiri and Debbie want to be taken seriously, they should stop acting like overseas diplomats and start acting like Māori leaders. Until then, their silence on local suffering speaks louder than all their speeches on Gaza ever could
.
The Maori Party are indeed just a group of activists, cloaked in the guise of the "indigenous race" that in this country, gives them the ability to enter parliament and to pretend that they represent a broader group of constituents. There are so many things that are wrong about how we have got to this point and where it is taking us. We will never be a great country if we continue to look back, pander to so called victims of colonialism and separate the way we treat NZ'ers based on some particular percentage of their genes. There is no worse crime, in my view, than the mistreatment of children by their carers, regardless of ethnicity. We need to continue to shine a light on this atrocity and do all we can to protect the young and vulnerable, including dealing severely with perpetrators of crimes against them.
Is it possible to start a petition to deal with continuing Maori nonsense in Parliament?